The Chernobyl nuclear disaster: 26 years ago today

Today is the 26th anniversary of the Chernobyl. It is a disaster that left a 30-kilometre uninhabitable exclusion zone, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, and still threatens the lives of tens of thousands.

It’s 26 years later and what have the nuclear industry and its supporters learned?

Nothing.

The nuclear industry still hasn't realized or admitted that its reactors are unsafe. Reactors are vulnerable to any unforeseen combination of technological failures, human errors and natural disasters. That puts the tens of millions of people living near the worlds more than 400 reactors at risk.

(A map comparing fallout from reactor accidents in Chernobyl and in Fukushima. Significant radiation contamination from both will last for centuries.)

Nuclear power still has not found a way to finance itself without begging for subsidies from taxpayers. This is an industry that has been living off blank cheques from governments for the last 60 years. Private backers just aren’t interested. Nuclear is a “corporate killer” and a “dream that failed”.

There are countries, however, that are leading the way from nuclear to a renewable future. Germany, Italy, Belgium and Switzerland are all turning away from nuclear power. Just one of 54 reactors is operating in Japan now with the impact on people invisible. Japan is also showing right now that nuclear power isn’t needed.

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(Unregistered) Digid
says:

Pro-nuclear supporters always play down the effects of Chernobyl and try to tell us that nuclear is safe. I don't buy it.

I have j...

Pro-nuclear supporters always play down the effects of Chernobyl and try to tell us that nuclear is safe. I don't buy it.

I have just read Greenpeace's report about Nadiya and she and her family and many more like her will have to live with the horrible after effects of radiation contamination for a very long time to come. Do we want yet more poisonous and contaminated sites on our planet?

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(Unregistered) Damadboy
says:

Nuclear disaster shouldn't be the black sheep for all other energy disasters. Cleaner energy like Wind energy and others have disastrous effect on...

Nuclear disaster shouldn't be the black sheep for all other energy disasters. Cleaner energy like Wind energy and others have disastrous effect on the nature too especially on displacement and lost of wild life and habitat.

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(Unregistered) Roddy
says:

Digid - read the Chernobyl Forum reports over the 26 years since Chernobyl.

No-one says nuclear is safe, Chernobyl proved that. Nor is g...

Digid - read the Chernobyl Forum reports over the 26 years since Chernobyl.

No-one says nuclear is safe, Chernobyl proved that. Nor is gas, coal, or oil. Nor, as my example showed, is hydro, the biggest killer of any electricity generation technology since inception - some estimates of Banqiao deaths come to a million between direct deaths and diseases like cholera.

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(Unregistered) Ben
says:

And after decades of ever rising greenhouse gas, what has Greenpeace learned? Nothing. Still amping up the nuclear risk, ignoring the fossil risk, and...

And after decades of ever rising greenhouse gas, what has Greenpeace learned? Nothing. Still amping up the nuclear risk, ignoring the fossil risk, and keeping the faith that renewables will save us. With friends like this, our environment needs no enemies.

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(Unregistered) zamm_
says:

Yet another attempt to mislead us... Nuclear and hydro are indeed safe (relative to coal, gas, wood, etc., or even lack of energy), just as trains are...

Yet another attempt to mislead us... Nuclear and hydro are indeed safe (relative to coal, gas, wood, etc., or even lack of energy), just as trains are a safe way to get us around (relative to cars, motorbikes, or bicycles). That of course doesn't preclude disaster, such as this major one:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschede_train_disaster
Funnily, there were then no hysterical appeals by GP to quit trains and build Hummers instead...

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(Unregistered) ThinkAboutIt
says:

Hi,

My parents told me, back at the soviet union in Estonia men were taken at night without knowing to rescue Chernobyl. It was close for...

Hi,

My parents told me, back at the soviet union in Estonia men were taken at night without knowing to rescue Chernobyl. It was close for my dad to go, but fortunately he was not home. It was horrible. Black trucks driving to cities and taking men aged 20-30 to Chernobyl, without them knowing what was happening. No safety equipment nothing! Every man had 5min to go to the roof then back down. All of these men have serious problems nowadays, suffering from health risks, depression and alcohol addiction. This is how much the government cared about you!

Nobody knew about this radiation cloud that hit somewhat Estonia, but luckily there were winds. My mother clearly remembers when they went picking berries in the forest that the strawberries and blueberries were unusually huge. I was born around half a year later. Luckily I am healthy. In Belarussia women were told to make an abortion even as late as being on the third month.

This nuclear power plant is a huge risk for all of us. It would be stupidity to keep on building and using these plants. Every sane and wise person and knows this and knows there are better alternatives. Politicians should not do what they want, they should ask their people first! We all are at risk here! Also have you ever thought that if the radioactive waste would leak into the ocean, what will happen? When the undergrounds of earth will be full of radioactive waste? It clearly seams like humanity is not ready for nuclear power plants. Mainly because of politics and wars. Stupidity destroys humanity.

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Jan Haverkamp - Greenpeace
says:

@Roddy - you are right about large hydro. Apart from the several big catastrophes we have seen in history, large hydro also tends to have large scale ...

@Roddy - you are right about large hydro. Apart from the several big catastrophes we have seen in history, large hydro also tends to have large scale devastating effects on the surrounding environment. You will therefore not find new large hydro in the energy [r]evolution scenarios from Greenpeace and EREC.
I think you hit the nail on the head: mass electricity - large scale generation - seems in comparison with dispersed de-centralised generation to run faster out of control...

@Damadboy - it would be good if you would really look at the results of the wind developments in countries where it indeed does develop: Germany, Denmark, Spain, China, US... not only to the UK. Yes, there are examples of extremely bad planning, but they can be tackled if local people are involved in an early stage. The vast mass of wind generation is well-accepted in those countries, because it fits into a cleaner living environment.

@Zamm_ - welcome again :-) I personally do not know any hysteric people within Greenpeace - and I am active here since 1980. Maybe that is the reason that we come with arguments and well reasoned alternatives like the energy [r]evolution scenarios. By the way - bikes kill relatively little... bikers are killed a lot... by cars... so what is then the dangerous vehicle?

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(Unregistered) Roddy
says:

Jan - thanks for reply, I've read all the EREC/Greenpeace scenarios, and if one takes the position, which I do, that cuts in per capita consumptio...

Jan - thanks for reply, I've read all the EREC/Greenpeace scenarios, and if one takes the position, which I do, that cuts in per capita consumption through efficiency etc on the scale envisaged by EREC are highly unlikely, then the required generation in a decade or two really mandates more mass generation, and the absence of nuclear does in practice mean an acceptance of gas and coal.

If you desire electrification of transport to displace oil, that conundrum gets more severe of course.

Dispersed generation in and of itself means dispersed effects, little more. It can be more efficient or less efficient.

(Re the wind discussion, I have no issues with wind other than cost, scale, and intermittency. Not bothered about a few birds and a few pylons in the scheme of things.)

ThinkAboutIt - is that really true, Estonian men shipped to Chernobyl, 1400 km away? With Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Russia, all closer and far more affected? I hadn't read that in any of the reports. Certainly the First Responders were worst affected.

Re radioactive waste in oceans, we have had plenty of that in the UK from Sellafield over 50 years, and there seem no serious effects. Certainly less damaging than, say, oil.

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(Unregistered) Consider
says:

Anyone who thinks nuclear is safe should take a look at these presentations. Nuclear radiation is unbelievably dangerous and an unthinkable technology...

Anyone who thinks nuclear is safe should take a look at these presentations. Nuclear radiation is unbelievably dangerous and an unthinkable technology to use.

This is a devastating narrated photo slideshow about Chernobyl.
http://inmotion.magnumphotos.com/essay/Chernobyl

This is the (largely unreported) Eastern European research on the effects of Chernobyl.
http://www.nyas.org/Publications/Annals/Detail.aspx?cid=f3f3bd16-51ba-4d7b-a086-753f44b3bfc1

A PDF link to a report by the International Forum on Globalization with responses/rebuttals to the claims of viability, sustainability and safety of nuclear power.
http://ifg.org/pdf/Nuclear_Roulette_book.pdf

There is much, much more that could also be examined, but this is a start.